If you watched "
Jeopardy!" this past Wednesday, you would have seen a
little zinger related to civil unions:
On the Jan. 21 edition of the game show, a saucy clue challenged that perception. Under a category called “Civil” the $800 clue read as follows: “Some opponents of same-sex marriage say, hey gay folks, how about these? Wouldn't these be good enough?”
The correct answer, of course, is “What are civil unions?”
The clue writers’ flippant tone in the rhetoric attributed to gay marriage opponents is clear evidence of how they—like most gay people—feel about civil unions as an alternative to full marriage equality: They are a weak attempt at placation that suggests second-class citizenship, if not a kind of segregation.
I scanned the game show's Facebook page and didn't find one negative comment about the question from any of the show's fans. That's a
sharp distinction from how various online fans reacted to "Wheel of Fortune" last week when a winning contestant hugged his husband. Then again, "
WOF" eventually scrubbed the anti-gay comments from their Facebook page. Maybe "
Jeopardy!" is just quicker with the scrubbing!
